why do i need to update the app so i can see changes. Whats the point of a change log then? I have auto updates off cause it a hassle to revert back to an earlier version if I dont like the changes. I know for a fact the ig update is for their new stupid map feature and AI shit. I will not update unless it stops working completely. Is it so hard to say what specific bug was fixed and what exactly do you mean by performance.
why cant it be detailed like this
“Bugfixes and performance improvements”
I see that one all the time from big companies because it sounds nice and tells you nothing.
One of those updates a few years included embedding adware. So, thanks for that… jackhole
The obvious answer is there’s no human at the helm recording changes, it’s just the next build. You’ll take it and you’ll like it.
Or that the person writing the changelog is in marketing and knows that end users will be seeing this as communication directly from the company. Marketing people tend to foam at the mouth when they see a chance to “connect with their users”.
Right, like I said, no human at the helm
Your hypothesis is confirmed by “Because nothing says Fall like financial progress.”
Patch notes:
- A bunch of stuff you won’t like it need
OMG, thank you! Until now I thought I was the only person to be fucking annoyed by this shit.
We are here. Dozens of us!
- more ads
- more pointless notifications
- taken out that one thing you actually liked and put it behind a paywall
The meal planning app that I use got bought out by Samsung and they did this. Put a load of ads in and then advertised a “+” version that got rid of ads. The ads were just advertising the “+” feature. 12 months later they said they were going to remove the ads for everyone.
Even Google does the same with almost every app like Maps, Files, Chrome.
Who the hell uses Google Files for anything but a bad file picker?
That’s an example I gave. I use Solid Explorer.
Solid choice.
People who use defaults, what do you mean?
Google does a lot of A/B testing, so listing new changes may be pointless as the new features may be available only to select few.
Also developers have no incentive to document changes. It’s a hassle to compile a list of changes since last release, and people don’t read the Changelog for every release, especially with auto updates on.
I’d be great if they could at least use an LLM to compile the Changelog
You dont need an llm, and it doesn’t need to be a developer. Devs are more than capable of writing down words that a human can understand, and if the project is big there will be a manager who has the context to provide a short summary.
However all of that requires company effort.
Developers very seldom communicate in a way that pleases their company leadership. There’s a reason support, sales and marketing people have jobs. If companies didn’t need them, they would cut them to save cost.
However, the developer should be able to put down their changes and whomever is in charge of communications should be using the change log as a chance to communicate to end users the changes in a friendly way. Not this nonsense. LLM could do it but it, but it’s best to have it written by a person.
This seems like roughly what I said except discounting the idea that a changelog, marketing communication, sales communication, and support are all wildly different. I don’t want some dumbass in sales or marketing who can barely add two numbers together without a calculator trying to explain that Firefox fixed several crashes in the latest release. Similarly I wouldn’t want a developer trying to psychologically manipulate you into buying something you don’t need – that’s why you hire sociopaths.
“We’re updating the segmentation logic of our A/B test infrastructure to downgrade its respect for the CloudFlare score when deciding whether or not to mark a session as coming from a bot. This was skewing the data on several of our start screen UI experiments, particularly within APAC data.”
Sometimes, you really don’t want to hear it ;D
Actually, I do. But more importantly, I should have the option
Ahow many updates receives an app, is now considered a “good” metric somehow now. So now if dependabot pushes a PR, it’s a new release on the app stores (of course without testing)
The algorithms on the app stores now consider the app “active” and push the app “up” in ranking
There was a certain billionaire bragging about his app getting 3 vibe-coded updates a day while the competition “only” got 3 a week
So, they can’t write a real change log. What can they write? “Dependabot updated leftpad from 1.1.3.2 to 1.1.3.3” “untested: updated Gradle from 8.14.2 to 8.14.3” “200mb update to change a comma in the Hungarian translation”
“We are hard at work making discord work better for you”
While content being completely locked away inside proprietary app.
I dont know, I feel like all these fake messages are quite dystopian. What happened to actually treating users as intelligent? I guess maybe today most users dont know anything about tech so thats why this is happening.
For apps with generic update messages that also have source control and changelogs available: check to see how often the updates are just a manifest version bump and nothing more. Way greater than zero.
Most version revs for apps are just to reset review count and bury negative reviews with “review of an older version”.
It’s all gamification of walled gardens. Walled gardens that need to die.
chime: a PM asked an AI to write this after the only dev that knew how to do this quit
Discord: The PM was frustrated with the devs not summarizing this release crap that no one cares about anyway and hid it behind a link ah that’s so much cleaner now.
Instagram: fuck you
Linphone:
“Mariah thawing”
That’s grim
She needs to be defrosted from her summer stasis in time to sing about Christmas.
Though in all seriousness, it’s sad to think that enough people saw that AI slop of an update summary and thought, “Yep, that sounds better than anything I could’ve come up with. Let’s run with it.”
A developer here, I usually list user - facing changes in the Changelog.
Even if the changes are not listed, general “bug fixes and performance improvements” is a worthwhile update too. These updates can contain fixes to annoying UX glitches, or really speed up the app, if a new faster API endpoint was added to the backend, and app change is needed to make use of it. You will also get security updates, to the app and its bundled libraries which is important nowadays.
but why not list those specific changes instead of just saying “bug fixes and performance improvements”? If the changelog is character limited on app stores cant you put a link to a dev blog or something? I want to know what is being changed on apps that have access to data on my phone. I have permissions off on every single app because of this, you literally never know what they are doing. All im asking for is transparency. Tumblr has a dedicated blog where they talk about updates but spotify just doesnt even give a shit.
Im a dev too i dont understand the modern app development landscape, how hard is it to just tell users what they’re getting??
“performance improvements and bug fixes”
… which is also almost verbatim what it says at the bottom of the “good” example…
… in a addition to a link where they explain their “improvements and bug fixes” in greater detail without character limits. So yes it is a “good” example.
just trust us bro, no spyware in here, bro.
